


Falling

by Kyele



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: AU, Inexperienced Arthur, It's all offscreen but it's talked about, Kink Meme, M/M, Military Backstory, Offscreen Torture, Pre-Canon, Seriously guys Eames gets worked over pretty hard, When Arthur Met Eames, offscreen non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2014-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-13 17:46:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2159526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyele/pseuds/Kyele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“They didn’t tell you what kind of thief I was, did they?” Eames asks.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Mutely, Arthur shakes his head. </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“No, they wouldn’t. Well, I’m a dream thief. There’s a whole black market for dreamsharing. People will pay through the nose to extract someone’s secrets.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“That’s impossible,” Arthur says. “The technology for dreamsharing is brand new. No one else has it.”</i>
</p>
<p><i>“Wrong,” Eames says casually. “Would it surprise you to learn that this is, in fact, the </i>fifth<i> iteration of Project Dream?” Those brilliant blue eyes watch Arthur like a hawk, seeing the shock ripple across his face like the aftermath of an earthquake. “Oh, yes, it is. It always ends badly, you see. But sooner or later, out of an excess of optimism, they start it up again, hoping for a different result.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arriving

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old fill from the Inception Kink Meme, slightly cleaned up for reposting here. The [original prompt](http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/20822.html?thread=50258006#t50258006) called for some angsty Arthur/Eames, with one of them losing touch with reality and the other being there to steady them. This fic was originally written in 2012.
> 
> All the bad stuff happens off-screen and is not explicitly described, but it is referenced. Mind the rating and tags.

Arthur joins the military more out of a desire to piss off his parents than anything else. He knows that’s not exactly the best of reasons, but if he has to deal with them talking about how bright he is or how far he’ll go one more time, he’ll flip out. He’s graduating from high school in three months, staring down the barrel of a slate of college admissions letters most of the other kids at his school would quite literally kill for, and all he can think is _get me out of here._

He sneaks out of school over lunch the next day and joins up. He’s on a bus to the local army fort by dinner.

The army’s not exactly light on discipline, but after all, following the incomprehensible orders of a bunch of overbearing adults is something Arthur’s got a lifetime of practice doing. And the physical activity is something completely new. Always before, he was the bookish kid, the smart one, the nerd. Arthur discovers to his surprise that he likes his body, and that he’s good at getting it to do what he orders. Arthur gets ‘mind over matter’ well before any of his groupmates, and that brings him to the attention of the officer in charge of personal disbursement.

When Arthur finishes basic training, he gets his notice of transfer to report to Colorado and join Project Dream.

Arthur’s not told much about the project, of course, that’s not how the military operates. Instead he’s taken off the airplane and put in a convoy with a half-dozen other equally fresh recruits and trucked out into some desert whose name he doesn’t know – he’s not even sure if they’re still in Colorado – until they pull up to the side of an honest-to-God _mountain_. Arthur’s mystified until they round some smaller rocky outcroppings and see the enormous double doors set into the side of the mountain, incongrous metal gleaming against stone, and realizes what’s going on.

“This compound houses Project Dream,” the man in charge announces. He’s wearing the ribbons and epaulets of a Major and has instructed them all to call him Smith, a name he doesn’t even pretend is really his own. “You will all remain here for as long as you are associated with the project.”

Arthur stares at the forbidding entrance to the mysterious compound. _And how long will that be?_ Suddenly he’s not as sure about this as he was when he first got the notice, but there’s not exactly any turning back now.

He squares his shoulders and marches inside with the rest.

Later, when everyone has been assigned to quarters, stowed their gear and had the showers and mess hall pointed out to them, Major Smith explains a little further. The project is about a new device, a PASIV, that theoretically allows someone to go _inside_ dreams. That device is why they are all here. They are going to learn how to control dreams, and use lucid dreaming as an alternative method for extracting information from suspects and enemies of the state.

Arthur’s skeptical as all fuck, but the first time he tries it he’s blown away. They’re inside the mind of a recruit named Marissa, and she’s something of a surrealist, so everything is rendered in improbable dimensions with wild splashes of color and unexpected geometry. But it’s still amazing, and they get the information they’ve been sent to find easily. Best of all, from Smith’s point of view, Marissa has no idea when she wakes up whether the others have suceeded or failed. It’s completely untraceable, and the military observers are exultant.

Arthur takes to dreamwork like a duck to water, pushing ahead of his classmates to explore new and interesting tricks in the dream. Major Smith looks him over approvingly and makes notes in his dossier.

That’s when the General and the Prisoner arrive.

* * *

Arthur is taken out of a trial run early and told to pack up his things. He’s being moved, Major Smith says. They’re going to try something new, and Arthur is going to be at the forefront of their experiment.

“What is it?” he asks, stowing his gear efficiently, slinging the carrysack over one shoulder and following Major Smith past an interior checkpoint into a new area of the compound.

“A live test,” Smith says, gesturing Arthur into a new bunk. It’s a single, and Arthur stares. That’s unheard of for someone at his rank. Smith sees him gawking and waves Arthur to drop off his carrysack. “Necessary. You’ll be working this one alone, and we’re keeping you isolated from the rest of the project while the experiment is ongoing.”

Automatically Arthur obeys the unspoken order and drops the sack on the neatly made bed. “A live test?” he asks.

“Yes. It’s a little early, I know, but an opportunity just fell into our laps and we’re going to try to make the most of this. You’ve been chosen from your group because you’re the best we’ve got, hands down.”

Arthur straightens and tries not to show the pride he feels. “Thank you, sir.”

Major Smith’s mouth might twitch, or it might be a trick of the harsh flourescent lighting. “Here.” He hands Arthur a file, thick with papers, clippings, photographs. “This is everything we know on the target.”

“Target?” Arthur’s mind is racing ahead of his mouth as he flips open the folder. An eight-by-ten photograph stares back at him from atop the stack of information. 

“Thomas Eames,” Major Smith says. “Wanted international criminal. Well. No longer wanted, I suppose, seeing as how he’s currently in custody and being transferred to this facility as we speak.”

Arthur looks up from the file. “And I’m supposed to go inside his mind?”

Smith nods. “Exactly.” He leans forward and taps the folder in Arthur’s hands significantly. “We’ve got Eames, but the rest of his gang is still at large. We want you to find out where they are. Safe houses, methods they use to exchange messages, any sort of passwords they might use. Once you’ve got that, we can roll up the rest of the gang.”

Arthur blinks. This is ambitious, awfully ambitious, when the project’s only a few months old. “Sir, we’re just starting to figure out what we can do with dreamsharing. I’m not sure this will even work…”

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bust one of the biggest crime rings on the planet. You’re the best we have, son. You’ll make it work, I know.” Major Smith steps back. “Read through that. Get to know the man. You’ll have to gain his trust inside the dream, do you understand?”

“…Yes, sir.”

“Good man.” Smith turns to leave. “The prisoner is arriving tomorrow morning. You’ll go under as soon as we’ve got him secured. Be sure to get some sleep tonight. You’ll want to be at your best.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Smith favors Arthur with a nod, then leaves.

Arthur looks at the door, then turns to sit down on the bed and start learning everything there is to know about Thomas Eames.

* * *

The next day Smith leads Arthur into a room that could be located in any hospital in the nation, except for the lack of windows and the armed guard just inside the door. There’s only one bed in the room, and it’s occupied. A chair has been placed near the bed, and on a table between them, the PASIV sits, already open, two needles uncoiled and waiting for flesh.

Arthur can’t help staring at the man on the bed. Broad-shouldered, well-muscled; he looks like he could rip Arthur apart without even trying. Everything he’s read about this man, in the surprisingly thick dossier, says that he’d have absolutely no qualms about killing Arthur if he thought it would be to his advantage. Yet this man, Thomas Eames, is his target. The first live test subject for Project Dream. 

“Relax,” Major Smith says. “If you die in the dream, you just wake up here.”

“Sir,” he says, knowing it’s impossible but needing to try anyway, “I don’t think sending me in by myself is the right call. A full team, with more time to plan – ”

“There isn’t time to plan,” Smith cuts him off. “His gangmates are no doubt already searching for him. We need to get the information we want before they come knocking on our door.” Smith motions Arthur to the chair by the bed, and he sits down – reluctant, but obedient, baring his forearm for the cannula. “You’ve familiarized yourself with the file?”

“Yes, sir.” Thomas Eames, twenty-eight, former British Army, former SAS, current international thief. Child of privilege. Played cricket at Eton and attended Cambridge before joining the Army. Likes games of chance, particularly card games. Con man. Good at playing people. And yet Arthur is supposed to waltz into Eames’ dream and play _him_ instead.

Smith slides the needle into Arthur’s arm. Arthur stares at the PASIV. Somehow, he doesn’t think it will work. 

“Here you go,” Smith says, and presses the button.

Arthur falls.

* * *

It’s storming in the dream. Rain and thunder beat down overhead like the sounds of a mind at war. Which isn’t too far off, really.

Arthur is standing on a city street in the middle of a raging thunderstorm, at what may as well be midnight; the sky overhead is pitch black, and the only illumination comes from streetlamps and the lighted windows in the tall buildings that tower around him on all sides. All around him, there’s an endless river of _people_ , anonymous figures in dark suits and black umbrellas. A parade of banality. It’s not what Arthur expected out of Eames’ mind, this bland conformity. After reading his file Arthur had expected sun and sand and spice, hot glaring lights and sweat and bright colors. Instead there’s a sidewalk at night in the rain, going on forever into the distance, while around them an infinity of skyscrapers loom like the standing stones, their tops lost in the blackness above. Arthur has to suppress a shudder and looks around him for any sign of the mark.

Eames appears suddenly, stepping out of the crowd on the sidewalk like a ghost or a mirage. He, at least, looks roughly like Arthur expected. The checked shirt is loud enough to violate local noise ordinances; he’s wearing a hat that would make anyone else look like a gangster but on him just looks like an eternal child playing dress-up. And he’s walking right towards Arthur.

Arthur fights down the urge to tense. If this is going to go off the rails, the first few seconds are the likeliest time. But acting like he _expects_ to be caught is the best way to make sure it actually happens, so instead he deliberately relaxes his stance, turns towards Eames, and raises a hand in greeting.

Eames spots him quickly enough, and to Arthur’s relief, his face lights up in a smile. That’s promising, anyway; he hasn’t _immediately_ identified Arthur as an intruder. Eames jogs the last few steps towards Arthur and then, shockingly, grabs him. For a moment Arthur flails, thinking _oh god it didn’t work, he knows already_ before his mind catches up and he realizes that, of all things, Eames is _hugging_ him, swinging him around with his feet a foot off the ground like a long-lost friend before setting him down and laughing a little sheepishly. And then Eames does the one thing that Arthur does not expect, would never have expected. Eames reaches out and claps his shoulder and says “Joey!”

He reels inwardly, gaping at Eames like a fish, and he’s sure he’s blowing his cover except that apparently there’s no cover to be blown. Eames thinks Arthur’s someone else, someone from his past, and all he has to do is _play it cool, dammit_ and this might all work out after all.

“It’s good to see you, Joey,” Eames says more seriously. “Hey, it’s been a long time since uni, hasn’t it?” Arthur racks his brain, trying to call up everything he knows on anyone from Eames’ past named _Joey_ , and coming up completely blank; this wasn’t in the dossier. But Eames’ college career was; maybe that will be enough. Maybe Arthur can use this to his advantage. 

He has to say something; Eames is watching him expectantly. “Fancy meeting you here,” Arthur answers, and adds a breathy laugh for good measure; it’s something he doesn’t have to fake. He feels like he’s mired in quicksand, mind moving at half speed, while Eames is taking Arthur by the arm and pulling him into the lobby of one of the faceless skyscrapers that reach up on all sides around them. Inside it is dry and bright, decorated with bright red sofas and striking blue pillows, deep mahogany furniture and silver accents. It’s brilliant the way Arthur expected Eames’ mind to be, and he feels relieved as Eames takes him over to one of the couches and settles him down, sits down next to him, and turns to him with every appearance of eagerness.

“H-How have you been?” Arthur stutters, brushing raindrops ineffectually from his clothing. He’s dressed formally, crisp shirt and suit jacket and waistcoat. It’s the outfit he had been going to wear at his high school graduation, down to the ivory cufflinks his father had given him and the slight shirring on the collar. Eames is looking at that collar appreciatively right now, and Arthur has to resist the urge to shiver.

“I’ve been well, darling, very well. Working hard. Yourself?”

“Fine,” he answers, trying to think of what to tell him, knowing he’ll need more details than that. What would someone like Joey do after college? “I’ve been doing some freelance work, for a big corporation stateside. It’s, um, interesting.” Hopefully, if he implies a need for secrecy, Eames won’t press. But he’s looking at Arthur knowingly, and he has to struggle to swallow past a dry throat. “What are you working on?” _Come on,_ Arthur implores him. _Give me something I can use._

Disappointingly, Eames just shrugs, smiling widely. “Oh, odd jobs, here and there. Nothing major since that heist we pulled in Zimbabwe. That was something, wasn’t it?’

Arthur does his best to keep his exultation hidden. _Here_ is information. There had been details on Zimbabwe in Eames’ file; the military hadn’t been positive his gang had been involved, but there had been enough indicators to include it in the data they’d given Arthur. And now, too, Arthur knows something about Joey: that Joey is part of Eames’ gang. He can work with this. Arthur leans back in the comfortable sofa, smiles. “It really was.”

Eames smiles back, and Arthur twitches; there’s something in that smile he doesn’t like. On the surface it’s comradely and open, but lurking beneath the surface there’s the distinct impression of teeth. _He’s not buying it,_ Arthur thinks.

“I dropped by to see Mal the other day,” Eames goes on casually. “Do you remember Mal?”

_That’s_ a name Arthur recognizes. One of the other members of the gang. _He’s testing me._ Arthur raises his eyebrows and gives Eames a _look_ , his very best _i-am-not-amused_ look, the one he’d given teachers when they questioned a fifteen-year-old’s placement in an advanced course. “Of course. Maybe you go around forgetting teammates, Mr. Eames, but I’m not likely to.”

Impossibly, the grin grows wider. “Oh, yes, very good,” Eames answers, and Arthur has the sinking feeling he’s complimenting Arthur’s performance instead of his memory. “Well, I dropped in on her. _You_ know.” Eames waggles his eyebrows significantly. Arthur’s instinct is to nod, but catches himself before the motion comes out; Eames could be implying anything, could be lying. He shrugs, instead, trying to make the motion look bored and slightly disdainful. “Well, I fancied a bit of a vacation after that last job, so I took in some sun.”

Arthur rewards this banality with a smile, all the while growing ever more uncomfortable as Eames goes on about the sun, and the fruity little drinks with umbrellas in them, and the nice local girls – local to where, Eames conveniently does not say. Arthur can’t escape the feeling that he’s lost control here, somehow; even though everything seems to be going as planned, he’s got Eames talking to him freely, he feels more and more like he’s the mouse being played with by the cat. Then Eames’ tone changes cadence, and Arthur realizes that he’s been asked a question. “What?” he asks, trying to catch his lagging wits up.

“I said, do you remember Mombasa?” Eames’ voice is wistful, and he’s looking at Arthur with eyes that are far too fond for Arthur’s peace of mind. He represses the feeling sternly. He’s got half a second to decide if this is a trap or not, if Joey ever went to Mombasa. He gambles.

“Yeah,” Arthur answers cautiously, groping for something safe to say. “Lots of sand.”

“I buried him there,” Eames says.

Arthur freezes. “Who?”

Now those brilliant eyes are looking right at Arthur, and they are longing and wistful and sad all at the same time. “Joey.”

Arthur can’t help shivering, but gives it one more try, fighting to hang on to control of the dream. “Eames, I’m right here. It’s me…”

Eames’ hand rises; Arthur fights down the urge to duck, thinking _he’s gonna hit me_ , but Eames only cups his cheek gently, broad thumb stroking over his cheekbones. “No. It’s not.”

Arthur’s breath catches in his throat; he cannot reply.

“I’d like to say you’re very good,” Eames says musingly. “You haven’t done anything blatantly off, and that’s really harder than it sounds, you know.” Now he sounds like one of Project Dream’s instructors. “But the little things. They tell the whole story. People think it’s the walk or the eyes or the clothes, but it’s that indefineable aura we all carry that’s hardest to get right.” Eames drops his hand, stands up, and Arthur tries not to look like a deer in the headlights. “And I’m afraid you’ve got it completely wrong, darling.”

“I – ”

“Ah,” Eames says in sudden understanding. “I see.”

Arthur looks down at himself and sees the now-familiar t-shirt, the standard-issue khakis, the tough black leather boots. He’s lost control of this clothing, and the game is most definitely up.

When he looks back up, there’s something in Eames’ eyes he can’t define. “It’s like that, is it?”

Arthur swallows. “I guess it is.”

Eames nods, as if he’d expected this, though how he could possibly have known is beyond Arthur. But Arthur had _warned_ them he was new at this, and they’d said, _do it anyway_ –

“New recruit? Project Dream?” he asks.

Arthur nods dumbly.

“Figures,” Eames says, almost to himself.

Arthur clears his throat, tries to speak. The extraction is a failure, and his time is nearly spent; any minute now they’re going to wake them both up and take Eames away and this will all be gone. But before that happens he has to ask. “How did you know?”

Eames raises one ironic eyebrow. “You don’t know?” Eames laughs then, rich and warm, and it shivers down Arthur’s spine. Underneath the warmth is something cold and hard as steel. “Oh, pet. I was in the _first_ Project Dream.”

Arthur stares. “You expect me to believe that?”

“Why not?” Eames asks, leaning back against the couch cushions, completely at his ease. “They didn’t tell you what kind of thief I was, did they?” Mutely, Arthur shakes his head. “No, they wouldn’t. Well, I’m a dream thief. There’s a whole black market for dreamsharing. People will pay through the nose to extract someone’s secrets.”

“That’s impossible. The technology for dreamsharing is brand new. No one else has it.”

“Wrong,” Eames says casually. “Would it surprise you to learn that this is, in fact, the _fifth_ iteration of Project Dream?” Those brilliant blue eyes watch Arthur like a hawk, seeing the shock ripple across his face like the aftermath of an earthquake. “Oh, yes, it is. It always ends badly, you see. But sooner or later, out of an excess of optimism, they start it up again, hoping for a different result.”

“But why lie? Why tell us that this is a new project?” Even as Arthur asks the question, he knows the answer.

Eames tells him anyway. “Naturally they don’t like to admit that their most promising participants consistently and repeatedly escape their control.”

Outside, rain drums on the sidewalk. Arthur stares blankly. _Of course._

“Mal and Dom were in it too,” Eames says, almost casually, as if Arthur isn’t having his world rearranged around him. “You’ll have seen their names in my file, won’t you? The first Project Dream. It was a joint program, back then. They’re keeping this one strictly American, I hear. Probably trying to avoid the usual ending.” 

“Ending?” His voice is jerky, half an octave too high. His mind is racing, trying to process – _joint program? another Project Dream?_ – too fast to realize that he shouldn’t be talking about this with Eames, that the tables have been turned and now Eames is the one conducting an interrogation and trying to earn _Arthur’s_ trust.

“The first Project Dream used an old compound of somnacin,” Eames tells him. “It was unstable. Most of the participants went insane.” He smiles, as if he’s talking about the weather. “I didn’t fancy that fate, and neither did some of the others. But the military wasn’t particularly interested in letting us go. So we had to make our own exit, and I’m afraid we left behind a bit of a mess on our way out.”

“Why?” Arthur demands. “Why wouldn’t they let you go? They’d have to anyway when the program was over – ”

“Over?” Eames looks at him strangely, and he feels his stomach clench. “The project is never going to be _over_ , darling. They never have any intention of letting you go. They’ve already told your parents.”

In the distance, Arthur hears music playing. The prearranged signal that the end of the dream is near.

“Told them?” Arthur’s mouth is dry. “Told them _what_?”

“That you’re dead,” Eames says. Thunder crashes outside, a bass counterpoint to his pronouncement. 

“Why?”

“So that you could never leave. So that you’d have nowhere else to go. It’s to keep you under control. You now; I, then.”

“And?” Arthur knows that’s not it. _Knows_ , God; the way his superiors kept pushing them to learn extraction techniques, learn how to control and, if necessary, warp the subject’s mind…

Eames smiles, a teacher pleased by a student’s quick thinking. “And so that they could use dreamshare as a weapon. But it would have to be a secret weapon, of course, a deniable weapon. You’re disposable now, darling.”

“Not me,” Arthur manages. “The program isn’t the same as it was when you were in it.” _He’s lying,_ Arthur thinks. _He has to be. He’s trying to use me. Trying to extract from me, god!_

“No?” Eames shrugs. “When’s the last time you heard from your family? Last month? The month before that? It wasn’t a phone call, was it? Just a letter. These days, no one sends letters unless they have to. You’ve probably never had letters from your parents before you joined the project. You don’t know what a letter from them really sounds like, now do you?” The music is growing louder, pounding in Arthur’s ears. Eames goes on, “How do you know they really wrote that letter? How can you be sure?”

“No!” Arthur cries.

“What did they tell you about me up there?” Eames grins. “That I’m a thief and a criminal? Well, it’s true; I am. Because that’s the only thing they left for me to be. That, or a weapon to their hand, and I decided to opt out of that life, thanks. But you’re walking straight into it.”

“I’m not,” Arthur says flatly, and steps away from him, struggling to get a grip on herself. There’s only a few more minutes left. “And you’re a liar. They told me about you, yes. You’re a con man, a forger, you’ll say anything.”

“What did they tell you about why I’m here, then? That they wanted to arrest me and my ‘gang’? Wrong.”

Arthur turns to stare out the window, intent on ignoring him. Eames’ footsteps come up behind him, though. Suddenly there’s a warm hand pressing in on each of Arthur’s shoulders, and he feels the brush of lips against his ear. “I’m bait, darling. They want me, right enough, but they want the others, too. We’re the ones that got away. The prodigal sons, the brilliant stars of the first Project Dream. Their dogs slipped their leash once and they’ve never been able to get close enough to get us back since. But somehow they found out where I’d be, and they think they can get to everyone else through me. So here I am.”

Arthur shivers, the sensation of Eames’ breath against his neck unbearably ticklish, warm and wet and far too intimate, no matter that it’s only a dream.

“They wanted you to gain my trust, isn’t that right? So that I would betray Mal and Dom to them. Well, forget it. It won’t happen. They’ll try a few more times, down in the dream, but eventually they’ll give up. You watch and see what happens next.” Eames is spitting out his words like bullets meant to hurt. Arthur thinks, distantly, that Eames is afraid. “They’ll torture me, and then when Mal and Dom come from me, you’d better pray they don’t get their hands on them too. Because everything they do to me they’ll do to them tenfold, until we agree to be their good little dogs again. And that’s when they’ll kill you. Because it won’t do to have any loose ends dangling around. So you’d better think about the side you’ve chosen to be on, because you’re on the straightest path yet invented to hell.”

Arthur jerks away from Eames and spins around, suddenly desperate to get away. All around them, the music swells. Arthur opens his mouth to reply, but blackness takes him first.


	2. Falling

When Arthur wakes up, Eames is still unconscious. They’ve given him something extra to keep him out after the PASIV timer runs down, to allow Arthur to pull the cannula out and coil it down and get out of there before they move Eames back to his holding cell. Major Smith isn’t thrilled to hear that Arthur had failed to gain Eames’ trust on the first try, but at least he accepts the somewhat edited version of events Arthur gives him without demur. At Smith’s probing, Arthur tells him about being taken for an old friend from university (and Smith promises to get him any information on ‘Joey’), but adds that Eames had been unwilling to be drawn, not sure of his surroundings or his companion.

Fortunately or unfortunately, this rendition only encourages Major Smith to believe that additional trials will yield success. _If he’s not sure he can trust you yet, he’s open to the possibility of trusting you in the future. You’ve done well to get that far, Arthur. We’ll keep trying._

Which is how Arthur finds himself inside the dream with Eames again, and again, and again. The second time, he tries to play Joey again, and Eames laughs in his face and asks for his real name, since Arthur hadn’t actually told him the first time they were down in the dream together. Arthur refuses to tell him, trying to play the deception out, but Eames just starts calling him increasingly ridiculous things until he finally admits it, the fifth time he’s down there. After that, Eames calls him Arthur, no matter what he looks like. After the seventh try, Arthur stops bothering to pretend anything, though he doesn’t admit that to Major Smith.

It’s clear that Major Smith and the others have no real appreciation of the time differential between the dream world and the real world. They must know it intellectually, but they can’t ever have been down in the dream themselves, or they’d understand exactly how dangerous the game they’re playing is. Arthur has only been part of this experiment for a few days, as they measure time, and that’s hardly enough for him to have formed any sort of bond with the prisoner. But down in the dream world they’ve had weeks, and Eames has been making the most of that time to make inroads on Arthur’s friendship. Eames will talk to him by the hour, telling suitably edited stories of his escapades as a dream thief, or even more guarded tales of his childhood or time in the military. Arthur doesn’t even notice, at first, that he’s started to respond in kind. He’s halfway through the time he and some of his friends from high school snuck out of their houses in the middle of the night to go clubbing downtown before he catches himself and pulls up short. Eames just looks at Arthur resignedly and Arthur realizes that he’s been talking without interruption for the better part of an hour, that he’s told Eames things about his life that he’s never shared with anyone else, and they’ve been laughing and joking like the best of friends. It’s just that they’ve been spending so much time together, Arthur thinks, and it’s not like he ever sees anyone else he can talk to topside, is there? And Eames _gets_ it. He’s a dreamer, too. He’s even teaching Arthur a few tricks as the sessions roll on and the time they’ve spent together in the dream ticks from weeks to months. If Major Smith knew, Arthur thinks, he’d be horrified. But Major Smith and the entire US Army are unimportant down here, when Eames is standing Arthur in front of a mirror and coaching him through changing his shape for the first time.

“You see, dreamsharing started long before the current project,” Eames says as Arthur, triumphant but exhausted, relapses into his natural shape. They’re still in the skyscraper lobby, only now as Arthur turns around he sees it has a restaurant attached, though Arthur’s sure it didn’t the first time he was here. But Eames only smirks at Arthur’s exclamation of surprise and leads him over to an elegant table set for two. It’s all high-thread-count tablecloths and gleaming silver and dancing candleflame, and it makes Arthur feel like he’s sitting in a spotlight. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows that make up an entire wall of the restaurant, the dreamscape is almost pitch black, and the ever-present rain drums against the glass.

“How long ago?” Arthur asks, reaching for a glass of water.

Eames makes a thoughtful noise, fingers playing on the delicate stem of a crystal wineglass. He’s the picture of ease, lounging back in his chair, as if topside his body isn’t strapped down to a standard-issue hospital bed with a PASIV needle in one arm and an IV full of sedatives in the other. “No one’s quite sure, really. I got into it about five years ago.”

_Why are you telling me this?_ Arthur wants to ask. _You know I’m supposed to get information from you. You shouldn’t be volunteering it, for god’s sake._

Eames reads this on Arthur’s face and laughs. “Because this is nothing new to your superiors. They know all of this already, so what’s the harm in discussing it with you? Besides.” His eyes flash with mischief as he pauses to take a sip of his wine. It’s excellent, as is the food and the surroundings; whatever else he may be, Eames is one hell of a dreamer. “If they think I’m warming up to you, they’ll let you keep coming down here.”

“And why would you want that?” Arthur demands. Maybe he shouldn’t be pushing Eames like this; the other man may be strapped down topside, but down here, especially in Eames’ dream, he could snap Arthur’s neck like a twig. And while death would wake Arthur up, there’s plenty of things Eames could do instead that would turn this dream into a drawn-out session of pain.

Once again Eames reads his mind. “Oh, darling, do you really think I would?” He looks unaccountably hurt.

Arthur looks away. _Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know._

Eames sighs. “Well. Think it through. If the army thinks you’re making progress, they’ll delay the start of more, ahem, physical means of persuasion. I’m rather interested in that, after all.” He smiles. “Not to mention that the surrounding – and the company – are _far_ more pleasant down here than they are up there. Why shouldn’t I want to spend as much time dreaming as possible?”

Arthur nods unwillingly. Eames has a point.

Then Eames sets the wineglass down and leans forward, claiming Arthur’s full attention with a wave of his hand and a significant look. “You have to tell them I’m talking to you, Arthur,” he says seriously. “They must think you’re making progress. It’s one short step from ineffectual to expendable, and you wouldn’t like being considered expendable at all.” He sighs then and looks away. “I can assure you of that.”

Arthur swallows. “Yeah,” he says, wincing inwardly at how uncertain his own voice sounds. “Okay.”

“Good.” Eames sits back, the moment gone. “Now. You were asking about the history of dreaming, I think? Let’s see. I joined the military right out of uni…”

* * *

Arthur continues telling Major Smith that he thinks he’s making progress, sharing the more irrelevant tidbits of Eames’ conversation as proof. Arthur’s afraid that the details he reveals will be so banal that no one could possibly be fooled, but Smith is positively delighted, heaping praise upon Arthur’s head. He can’t figure out why, but Eames is more than willing to explain.

“It’s because I’m the best, darling,” he says without a trace of modesty. The two of them are back in the lobby, sitting in comfortable armchairs and staring into a crackling fire. “I’ve been in this business since it got started, and no one out there can forge as well as I can. If you’re even able to get in and out of my mind without me realizing I’m here, your ‘Major Smith’ is going to be over the moon.” Eames laughs, gesturing with the tumbler of scotch that he’s been holding but not drinking from all ‘evening’. Arthur catches himself wondering why Eames conjured it up if he doesn’t plan on drinking it, if Arthur should suggest they do something else if Eames is bored. He sits on the impulse hard. Increasingly, he’s coming to see Eames as a friend. That’s dangerous, Arthur knows, but somehow he can’t seem to stop himself, and it doesn’t help that Eames is so damn personable. _Forger,_ Arthur reminds himself, _con man_ , but sometimes he catches Eames unawares, looking at Arthur with a strange kind of fondness in his eyes, and then Arthur forgets all of his good resolutions.

“So it doesn’t matter that I’m only telling him how many drinks you had on a beach in Mumbai?” Arthur asks.

“Not at all, pet. You could tell him what color shirt I’m wearing and he’d be happy. As long as you _don’t_ tell him I have any idea you’re more than another projection.”

Arthur nods, but he’s uncomfortable, and Eames changes the subject. They spend one whole dream session arguing about the merits of American versus European football, and Arthur tries to ignore the way he loves to just sit and listen to Eames talk, that accent sliding past his ear like fine brandy, making anything and everything sound fascinating.

* * *

Eventually, Eames moves on from teaching Arthur how to change himself in the dream and starts teaching Arthur how to manipulate the dream itself. “You can produce anything you want,” he explains, “but being flashy has its own risks. It’s better to work within the paradigm of the mind you’re visiting. That’s why it’s important to know as much as possible about your mark.” He smiles.

“And you’re my mark,” Arthur says dryly.

Eames spreads his hands wide. “Of course, darling. Now.” He closes his eyes for a moment, and the world around Arthur blurs dizzily. When it stabilizes, the lobby is gone. Instead, the two of them are standing atop one of the infinity of skyscrapers, wind and rain whipping around them, tugging at clothes and howling in ears. Arthur shoves suddenly bedraggled hair out of his face, staring in surprise. “Look.”

Arthur squints, trying to make out where Eames is pointing; it’s hard in the sudden darkness, but after a minute his eyes adjust, and he sees that there’s another building across the way from them, several hundred feet across the sidewalk below. “What about it?”

“How would you get over there?”

Arthur stares at him. “I’d take an elevator to the bottom of this building, cross the street, and take another elevator to the top of that building.”

Eames throws his head back and laughs. “Oh, Arthur. You’re so literal. I pity anyone who tries to break into your mind, really I do.”

Arthur crosses his arms and scowls. “All right, what do you have in mind?”

Eames’ laughter vanishes as quickly as it came. “That is what you have to figure out. If we were in your mind, and we wanted to get over there, we’d do exactly as you suggested – two elevator rides and a crosswalk – and that would be normal for you, do you follow? Your mind wouldn’t be suspicious of us, because we were acting in accordiance with the rules it’s set. Now. What if we’re in someone else’s mind? What if we’re in mine? Which, as it happens we are, is a rather apropos hypothesis.” He grins.

Arthur glances from Eames to the ledge and back again. “You’re saying you wouldn’t take the elevators.”

“That’s right. And if you tried, you’d discover that there aren’t any elevators in this building at all. You could conjure them up, of course, but that would alert me to your presence and trigger my mental defenses. So you’ve got to figure out how I would do it, and use that method.”

“Wait.” Arthur throws one hand up and focuses in on the interesting part of that sentence. “Mental defenses?”

“Of course.” Eames looks at him pityingly. “Everyone who works in this business is militarized to some extent, darling. Otherwise you invite becoming a victim.”

“But.” Arthur looks around. “Where are they, then? I’ve never seen any evidence of defenses. You’ve never done anything to me.”

Impossibly, Eames smiles. “Maybe I don’t want to.”

Arthur stares at him, trying to process that impossibility. “But I’m your enemy. I’m invading your mind. Against your consent, god, they’ve got you strapped to a table up there, you’re talking about how they’re going to start _torturing_ you soon. Why on earth would you let me in?”

“At first?” Eames shrugs. “Because I was bored. Because I wanted to take their weapon and turn it against them. Because, as I told you already, the more time we spend down here, the less time they spend, as you say, torturing me.” 

“And now?” Arthur whispers.

Eames’ grin is like lightning, flashing across the space between them and illuminating the night. “Maybe I like you.”

Arthur is still trying to figure out something to say to this, something that isn’t _but you shouldn’t_ or _are you an idiot_ or, god forbid, _maybe I like you too_ when Eames reaches out and grabs his wrist. Arthur lets out a yelp of surprise as he finds himself tugged forward, stumbling against Eames’ broad chest and being held in place by two strong arms.

“Now pay attention,” a warm voice whispers in his ear. “This is how I’d do it.”

And then Arthur is flying.

* * *

At the end of the first week, Major Smith holds a review on Arthur’s progress. The General is back, sitting at a metal table in a small room that Arthur’s never seen before. Major Smith sits to his right and puts Arthur across from them both. The lighting is no more harsh than any of the other fixtures throughout the compound, but it still strikes Arthur as being an interrogation. He’s not really surprised.

“And you’re _sure_ the prisoner hasn’t detected your presence,” Major Smith is asking for what seems like the hundredth time. “He thinks you’re a projection.”

“Yes, Sir,” Arthur answers almost robotically. It would be better if he could put some emotion into his voice, something convincing or certain or even just a little weary of the repetition. Something, anything, to allay their concerns. But it’s taking every ounce of his self-control to keep his voice free of the emotions he _doesn’t_ want them to hear, the ones that indicate that his attitude towards the prisoner has developed… complications. If they catch a whiff of that, Arthur is off the program for sure. He’s not quite ready to credit all of Eames’ wilder assertions about what Major Smith and the General might be capable of. It seems too far-fetched and melodramatic to actually think, in all seriousness, _they might have me killed._ But it’s also not so unbelievable, given what Arthur’s seen of Project Dream, that Arthur is ready to discard the notion entirely. So he keeps the worry and concern and affection he feels for Eames out of his voice, and the price he pays is a monotonous tone that keeps Major Smith asking the question over and over again.

“All right,” Major Smith says finally, and Arthur has to fight not blink in shock at the unexpected words. “Thank you, Arthur. I think we have enough. You’re dismissed.”

There’s only one thing he can say to that, so he says it. “Yes, Sir.” Arthur stands, salutes, turns to leave. 

But maybe his steps aren’t quite as crisp as they would otherwise be, and maybe his hand lingers on the doorknob a moment longer than is strictly necessary, and maybe he opts to ease the door closed softly instead of just letting it go on his way out. And as a result, he hears the General’s voice, for the first time today, since the General had just sat there in silence the entire time Smith was asking Arthur questions.

“It’s clear to me we won’t get anywhere without some additional pressure,” the General says. And then the door closes behind Arthur with a _click._

* * *

Whatever that means, whatever conclusions Smith and the General have drawn, Arthur is sent down into the dream again a few hours later, at what has become the usual time. Eames seems genuinely glad to see him, and no matter how many times Arthur tells himself that Eames could probably make himself look genuinely glad to see the Grim Reaper, he still feels warmth spreading through his chest when their eyes meet and that engaging smile spreads across Eames’ face.

“Arthur,” Eames says in delight. “Do come join me.” Eames is sitting in the restaurant again, raising a glass to Arthur and gesturing to an empty chair set at an inviting angle from the table.

Arthur walks over with none of his usual grace, sinking into the chair and dropping his gaze to the place setting. Eames is something of an artist, it seems, and although the basic structure of the dream is always constant – the rain, the sidewalk, the skyscrapers, the lobby and the restaurant – the details change every time Arthur visits. Often they change several times within the dream. Today the china is a delicate off-white, so thin Arthur can almost see the luminescence of the tablecloth shining through. It’s got a delicate pattern of golden tracery pressed into its rim, and in the center, to his surprise, a stylized golden heart.

The symbol surprises him, both for its understatement and for its implications of romance, and for a moment Arthur loses control of his mind enough that it starts bombarding him with the thoughts and images he’s been steadily repressing for the last week. Month, if he goes by dream time. Which Arthur is beginning to. Trying to distract himself, he looks over to the salad plate, and sees that it’s a copy of the dinner plate, with one small difference. Instead of a heart in its center, there’s a spade. Arthur blinks, then looks across to Eames’ plate. A diamond.

Right. Card suits, for the gambler and man of fortune. Arthur shakes his head, bemused at himself, and reaches for water.

“What’s wrong?” Eames’ voice is idle, relaxed, but Arthur glances upward and sees that Eames’ eyes have sharpened on him.

“Nothing,” Arthur mutters, then sighs. “Just. Well. Debriefing, today.” He hadn’t been sure, when he came down into the dream, whether he was going to tell Eames about it at all. He certainly hadn’t been planning to tell him right away. Later, maybe, when they were sitting around the large brick fireplaces Eames seemed to love, sharing a liquid dessert, all of Arthur’s muscles relaxed and a feeling of pleasant lassitude overtaking him. In those moods, he’s long since accepted, he’ll tell Eames anything Eames wants to hear. But Arthur had allowed himself to become preoccupied with the memory of the interrogation, and then by the stupid china. Telling Eames about the debriefing seems suddenly the lesser of evils, if it will distract them both.

And it does work, in that Eames’ eyes acquire a serious cast to go with the sharp glint of attention, and he sets his own glass down and focuses completely on Arthur. “Are you all right?”

Arthur stares in surprise, then laughs weakly. “Yes, I’m fine.” He looks curiously at Eames. “Shouldn’t you be worrying about yourself? You’re the prisoner, remember?”

Eames’ sigh is more seen then heard. “I wish you’d believe me, Arthur, when I tell you you’re only one misstep away from sharing that particular distinction yourself.”

Arthur looks away, suddenly uncomfortable. “Yeah, well, so far so good.”

“I’m serious.” And Arthur’s head comes back around at the unaccustomed flash of temper in Eames’ voice, usually so smooth and persuasive. “As long as they need you, you’re safe. But if they get a flash – ”

“They won’t.” Arthur’s own voice crackles with emphasis, and he shakes his head. “It was just a routine debriefing. They wanted to know if I’d made any more progress, and they wanted to be convinced you don’t suspect I’m not a projection. That’s it.”

“And are they?” Eames asks softly, voice still carrying that hard edge. “Convinced?”

“Yes,” Arthur says firmly. “They are.”

They stare at each other for a moment longer, Arthur striving to look firm, Eames appearing to search Arthur’s face for – reassurance? fortitude? determination? At last, Eames relaxes back into his seat and looks away with a sigh, freeing Arthur to blink. Eames looks suddenly old, and reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose, rub his eyes.

“I’m worried about you, darling,” Eames mutters after a moment. “You’re playing a dangerous game; I wish I could make you see that. I wish I could protect you.”

“Eames.” Arthur’s throat is dry; he swallows and tries again. “Eames, I’ll be fine. I’m more worried about you, anyway.”

Eames laughs a little, still looking away from Arthur. “I’ve been around the block before, Arthur. This isn’t the first time a disgrunted ex-employer has caught up to me and tried a little creative persuasion.”

Arthur doesn’t want to think about that; the mere thought sends something shooting down his spine and curling in his gut, something dangerous and proprietary, which is ridiculous. As Eames says, this isn’t his first rodeo. He can take care of himself. He doesn’t need Arthur trying to be a hero, especially if Eames really is right about the military. If he is, then anything Arthur tries to do will just land him right here next to Eames, and probably with someone a lot less empathetic playing around in his mind.

“Right,” Arthur says instead, and because he needs to get away from this conversation before the conversation gets away from him, he stands up and walks away from the table, back into the lobby, and sinks down into one of the omnipresent red two-seater couches. He thinks vaguely that Eames must have had a couch like this in his house as a child, because only sentiment can possibly excuse his affection for this ugly piece of furniture. There’s one of the electric blue throw pillows sitting propped up against the arm of the sofa, too, and Arthur picks it up absently and fiddles with the fringe.

“Arthur.” Eames comes up behind him and looks down from over the back of the sofa. The light is behind him and it throws his face into shadow, but Arthur can still see the hard set of his eyes, the distressed slant of his lips. “Please don’t be angry, darling.”

“I’m not angry,” Arthur says, discovering to his own surprise it’s true. “Just…” he waves a hand aimlessly. “I’m worried about you, do you get that? You’re acting like we’re here on a little vacation or something, but you’re a prisoner. They’re pumping you full of drugs and sending someone to root around in your fucking _mind_ , and if I’m to believe you they’re going to start doing a whole lot of other bad shit real soon now. But all you want to talk about is how _I’m_ doing and how _I_ have to make sure they don’t think _I’m_ expendable!” Arthur’s voice starts to rise quickly as he talks, and by the end he’s shouting. Around the lobby, the projections take no notice, continuing their endless tasks. Futile. It’s all futile. “You’re the one all of these horrible things are happening to! You’re the one we should be worrying about!”

“Arthur,” Eames says softly, coming around to kneel in front of the couch Arthur’s lying on. He sighs and shakes his head and looks so impossibly young, despite the file that says he’s got half a decade on Arthur and Arthur hasn’t felt young since middle school. Eames is looking at Arthur with something in his eyes Arthur can’t quite define, and focuses instead on Eames’ hands, pressed to the soft red fabric of the sofa right in front of Arthur. Barely an inch away but still not touching, and trembling faintly. “I don’t want them to do any of that to _you_.”

Arthur jerks and stares at Eames, breath coming hard against his teeth from having shouted at him, and tries to grapple with the way Eames’ mind works, that he can be so careless of what’s happening to him and yet so concerned with what happens to Arthur. This is crazy, they just met a week ago – a month ago – how can Eames care so much about Arthur already? How can Arthur care so much about Eames? How can it mean anything at all, when they’ve never even met in the waking world, and all that they know of each other is what they’ve shared in a dream?

“Arthur.” He looks up, and Eames is smiling. Not his usual smile, wide and welcoming and brash, the smile of man with confidence who is ready to face the world and say _is that all?_ to anything it might give him. This is an expression Arthur has never seen on Eames’ face before. It’s small and tender and secret. Somehow Arthur knows that no one has ever seen Eames smile that way before, and he also realizes that if he turns his head away and makes a joke or even just doesn’t smile back, Eames will never smile quite that way for him again.

And finally Arthur thinks _you know what, screw it._

He shoves the bright blue cushion out of the way to land on the floor with an incongrous _plop_ , leans that last infinite inch between them, and kisses Eames for all he’s worth.

Which, to be fair, isn’t a lot. Arthur had kissed a few people before, back in high school, and he’d fairly quickly figured out that girls did nothing for him, but proceeding from that point had been depressingly difficult. Most of the other guys his age had just been so _boring_ , immature and focused on the trivialities of high school life that Arthur had been desperate to escape. Eames is exotic and mysterious and amazing, and Arthur really has no idea how to kiss someone like him.

Fortunately, Eames is apparently more than willing to pick up the slack in that department. “Oh, _darling_ ,” he breathes against Arthur’s lips, and twists around to pin Arthur against the couch’s armrest. “I thought you’d never ask.”

A few subjective eternities later, Arthur gasps for breath and concedes to himself that Eames is every bit as good at teaching kissing as he is at teaching shared dreaming. “Wow,” he says breathlessly. A moment later Arthur kicks himself, because the last thing Arthur needs is for Eames to be convinced that Arthur is some kind of immature, adoring puppy. But Eames just smiles that smile for him again, and brushes a few loose strands of hair away from Arthur’s face.

“Darling,” Eames murmurs again, and for once it’s a term of endearment, and that strange, fond look is back on his face.

Arthur can’t help it. He kisses Eames again.

* * *

Dream sex, Eames teaches Arthur, is nothing like real sex is – or, in Arthur’s case, will be, since he’s still a virgin topside. Arthur’s not ignorant, just innocent, and he knows that topside there will be considerably more complications and considerations, none of which are apparently relevant in the dream. “Don’t worry,” Eames says reassuringly, stroking Arthur’s hair where they’re lying side by side in the massive bed Eames has conjured up off in a room off the lobby. Arthur’s flat on his back while Eames is on his side, propped up on an elbow, petting Arthur everywhere within reach. “I’ll take care of you, when we get back topside together.” 

Meanwhile, Eames teaches Arthur everything there is to know dream sex. By Arthur’s count it’s been two weeks topside since their first meeting, but down in the dream it’s been months, and Eames makes a toast over dinner about anniversaries with smiling lips and serious eyes. It’s long past the point of being a game for either of them, and Arthur convinces Eames to skip the dessert course and go straight to bed. Despite all of the flash and chatter of Eames’ personality, the habit of powering forward and damning the torpedos, he takes Arthur slowly and gently through his first experience with sex. Afterward, Arthur lies there and just focuses on breathing, holding on to Eames in a world that’s spinning apart and reforming around him in an endless kaleidoscope of light.


	3. Landing

The nineteenth time Arthur goes down into the dream, he ducks into the lobby alone, not bothering to wait until they meet on the streets. There’s no point; Eames will just take him into the lobby anyway, and Arthur is impatient to see him again. The time spent above is starting to seem irrelevant to Arthur, something he has to get through to get back where he belongs, with Eames. They’ll sit together on one of those bright red couches and talk about dreamsharing or the military. They’ll eat in the restaurant or retreat to spend some quality time in the bedroom, where Eames has recently been persuaded that he doesn’t need to be _quite_ so gentle with regard to his younger partner. Arthur is grinning to himself at the as he pushes open the glass doors, head bowed against the rain, and gets three steps into the lobby before he realizes something is very wrong.

Normally, the lobby is partially full of businessmen, walking around briskly in endless circles dressed in professional suits and carrying expensive briefcases. They’ve looked at him suspiciously in the past, but Eames has apparently decided he’s not a threat, and so far the projections have always kept their distance. He’s stopped noticing them.

But they’re gone.

In their place is a bevy of specialists. Some are psychiatrists; Arthur’s been in the military long enough to recognize the subtle signals of the profession, the sharp glasses, the eternal notepads, the brisk yet condescending demeanor. Others are unmistakeably doctors, with the stereotypical white coats and stethoscopes, clutching clipboards and looking worried. They’re all clustered around the usual corner where Eames and Arthur sit to talk, and Arthur has to push his way through to get to Eames. He’s lying on one of the ubiquitous red couches, supine, and he looks terrible.

“Eames?” he asks, swallowing.

The brilliant blue eyes open. “Hello, Arthur.” One hand rises, gestures; an armchair appears, close cousin of the sofa, and Arthur sinks onto it. His eyes don’t leave Eames. “Sorry I don’t get up. I’ve been having rather a rough day, you see.” His accent makes it hard for Arthur to read him; Eames always sounds cultured and impeccably groomed, but Arthur hears something new in it that’s never been there before. It takes him a moment to realize what it is. Pain.

“What’s wrong?” he asks almost automatically, looking Eames over for injuries. Eames catches him at it and lifts a reproving eyebrow. Arthur flushes. Of course; they’re in a dream, there will be no physical signs of any injury Eames sustained topside. But pain is a thing of the mind. The mind remembers, and makes the pain real, even in the dream.

“I was wrong,” Eames says dramatically, and pauses, like he expects Arthur to gasp or clap his hands or faint. He just waits, watching Eames steadily, and Eames rolls his eyes. “It appears that they have no intention of stopping your little dream jaunts just because they’ve started working me over topside.”

Arthur looks at him and wants to say _bullshit_. He’d just seen Eames up above, lying unconscious in the hospital bed, same as always. There hadn’t been a mark on him.

“Of course not, darling,” Eames sighs. It’s an annoying trick he has, responding to what Arthur’s thinking; he wonders if Eames can do it to anyone, or if it’s just Arthur. “It’s all under the clothes, and you can’t tell the arm’s broken while I’m just lying there, can you?”

“It’s broken?” he asks involuntarily.

“Mmm.” There’s a world of irony in the sound. “Reflex action, I’m afraid. You’re not supposed to throw your arm between the boot and your ribs, but I did it anyway.” He sighs. “They cracked the ribs anyway, of course. Fuckers.” That last comes out almost reflectively, not a curse, just a statement. 

“What are they hoping to accomplish?” Arthur asks helplessly.

Eames opens his eyes and rolls them around towards Arthur. “Pain is in the mind. If they fuck me up enough up there, one day I’ll appear down here and I won’t be able to tell which way is up. That’s when you’re supposed to pounce, you see.”

Arthur looks away.

“Oh, Arthur.” Eames sighs. “Don’t take it so much to heart. That’s just the way things are, I’m afraid.”

“It’s not right,” he whispers.

“That’s supposed to be my line,” Eames says, and it should be ironic, with the same self-mocking edge he uses in all of his pronouncements, but it’s not. It’s just a quiet statement, maybe a little vulnerable. Arthur’s not sure what to say, so he just sits there and strokes Eames’ hair and waits for the music to play.

* * *

Arthur starts keeping track of weeks by counting the number of times he’s hauled in for one of Major Smith’s interrogation-debriefings. He hasn’t been mixed in with the general population of Project Dream since this ‘experiment’ began, and he’s so far underground he has no actual way of telling time. Arthur’s not sure if they’re deliberately exposing him to sensory deprivation or if it’s just a side effect of the extreme isolation they seem to feel is necessary for The Prisoner. That’s how they refer to Eames, and how, by consensus, Arthur has been referring to him too. He feels it would be unwise to change that habit now. But it’s getting increasingly harder to use the bland demonym when the man himself has become the only thing real to Arthur. They’re not bothering, any more, to hide the signs of abuse from Arthur’s eyes, knowing he’s seeing the results in Eames’ mind. The capacity for cruelty they show staggers him, and he wants to cry or scream in rage for Eames, for himself, for his noble dreams of service. But if they get any sign that Arthur thinks of Eames as a person, and not an objective, he no longer has any doubts that he’ll be right there with Eames.

The debriefings themselves get progressively less routine. Smith is starting to push Arthur for results, demand more detailed renditions of what Arthur sees in Eames’ mind, what effects the abuse above is having on the man below. Arthur sticks as close to the truth as possible, mindful of the dangers of lying too blatantly. But it’s hard to force the words past his lips when he knows, he _knows_ , that everything he says is being neatly tagged and docketed and taken away. That somewhere an interrogator is reviewing Smith’s notes, analyzing and interpreting and then applying their conclusions to grow ever more expert at causing Eames pain. 

When Arthur first arrives in the dream, now, Eames will be lying down on one of the sumptuous red couches in their usual lobby, breathing very carefully and trying not to move. He’s giving Arthur a crash course on dealing with injuries from the real world while in the dream. When Eames goes under, his mind is still telling him that his arm is broken and his ribs are cracked and his fingers don’t work properly, and all of that’s reflected in the dream. There’s a series of mental exercises Eames uses to lock those parts of his mind out, so he can move and act normally, and he’s teaching them to Arthur as they go along. Arthur listens and learns and tries not to worry that it’s taking Eames progressively longer, each session, to return to normal.

Back in the so-called ‘real’ world, the routine of the base is changed for the first time since Arthur’s arrival. Instead of first thing after waking, Arthur’s visits to Eames’ mind are now scheduled shortly after his second daily meal. The reason for the change isn’t hard to divine. Smith and the General have stepped up their program of physical inducement, as Smith euphemistically refers to it, and now Eames is getting two sessions a day, one right before the dreamwalking and one right after. Once, the interrogation runs long, and Arthur is left standing in a room with an empty hospital bed and the ever-present guard, fingers twitching, waiting. 

It seems like an eternity he stands there, not daring to pace, before Eames is hauled in and dumped on the bed. He’s unconscious, and they haven’t even made a token effort to clean him up. There’s matted blood in his hair, more leaking through the white gauze wrapped around his torso – no shirt – and the fingers Arthur can see of Eames’ right hand are curled up awkwardly, obviously broken, mottled a deep and ugly purple. The color fades to a blue that’s almost black as the bruises march all the way up from his wrist to his shoulder. And pressed in among the bruises, like the tattoos Arthur has seen, like a loving work of art, are livid red blotches that can only be burns.

Arthur tamps down on the urge to swallow and fixes his gaze on the far wall, working as hard as he possibly can to remain impassive while an orderly comes in and hooks them both up to the PASIV. Down in the dream, after Eames has worked his way back to himself and they’re lying twined together, Arthur slowly and deliberately drags his fingers over the entire expanse of flesh, fingers to collarbone. He drops kisses on every inch of smooth, unmarred, well-muscled skin, glowing faintly golden in the lamplight, and sees the bruises behind his eyelids every time he blinks.

“Arthur,” Eames says helplessly, and brushes Arthur’s hair away from his eyes. Arthur wants to say so many things in reply, to make promises he knows he can’t keep; that it will never happen again, that Arthur will prevent it, that everything will be okay. Instead he presses his lips to Eames’ flesh, where his mind tells him a burn should be, and the words squeeze out from his eyes as tears.

* * *

The twenty-third time he goes down into the dream, Eames has changed from his usual arrival position. This is worthy of remark, because the last dozen times he’s been lying supine on the couch inside the lobby, keeping still except to breathe, speak, and look in Arthur’s general direction. At this point, Arthur thinks it would be easier to list the number of bones they _haven’t_ broken. Arthur’s growing increasingly worried that Eames’ system will just give out soon, unable to take any more, but he’s not a doctor and Eames assures him, with a laugh, that one of the best physicians in the world is “monitoring his care” to be sure Eames doesn’t die on them too early. (He’d only been able to do the finger quotes with one hand; they’d broken all of the bones in the other one. Eames always tells Arthur everything they did to him, in a voice steady as a rock, while he goes through the appropriate discipline to lock the effects away. Arthur hates every minute of it, but he can’t pull himself away. He has to know what’s happening. He has to know the truth.)

Tentatively Arthur takes his seat in the armchair and regards Eames. He’s lying on his side, now, instead of his back. Arthur doesn’t know why, but it must be significant; Eames hasn’t been moving when he could avoid it since the military got tired of waiting for Arthur to make progress and took matters into their own hands. “Eames,” he calls.

He opens his eyes. “Arthur.” Eames tries a smile. For the first time, it doesn’t quite take. Arthur doesn’t know what to make of that. Eames is a master con man, the self-described best dream forger in the business, a chameleon who can be anyone you want him to be and several people you didn’t realize you wanted to boot. It can’t be a good sign that he’s losing control of his facial muscles that way.

“What’s wrong?” Arthur asks, the same way he always does, trying to stick to the script.

Eames’ eyes slide closed again. He doesn’t answer.

“Hey!” Arthur stands back up, crosses the short distance between them, reaches out to touch him. His hands stop an inch above Eames’ skin, unsure if his touch would bring comfort or pain. “Wake up, please…”

“Arthur,” Eames says, and tries to laugh. “Think about what you’re saying.”

Arthur shakes his head, then sees it. The pool of blood. Eames is lying in it. “You’re bleeding,” he whispers. It’s forming underneath Eames, spreading slowly, dripping down the sides of the couch. He’s never bled in the dream before. Pain and paralysis may have carried through, but their dream bodies are disjoint from their real selves; Eames has always _looked_ fine, outwardly normal, as if he might jump up and run off any moment. Arthur’s eyes track the flow of blood from where it seeps from Eames’ middle, through the thin cotton of his slacks, spreading up to lick the hem of his shirt. It’s too much blood, Arthur thinks; there hadn’t been any visible topside, so whatever injury Eames had taken to cause it couldn’t be that bad. Whatever it is, his mind is magnifying it in the dream. 

“That’s what happens,” Eames says, sounding utterly exhausted, “when your rapists don’t use lube.”

Arthur jerks away, backpedals, catches his hip on the edge of the couch and sits down hard. Eames has closed his eyes again, for which Arthur is impossibly thankful; he doesn’t know how he could meet Eames’ gaze right now as Arthur’s stomach clenches and his head spins with fear and loathing and utter revulsion. _No,_ he thinks helplessly. _They wouldn’t. They wouldn’t…_ it is the last, dying cry of his loyalty to Project Dream. Because he knows, now, that they would. He has seen enough of their handiwork to date to know that his so-called superiors would do exactly that to Eames, and Arthur is suddenly filled with an urge to violence unlike any he has felt before. He wants to track them down, everyone who did this to a fellow human being, and hurt them. Hurt them as badly as they hurt Eames. Make them feel what he’d felt, realize the enormity of their sins.

Arthur thinks, _I know what side I’m on now._

* * *

It gets harder and harder for Arthur to remember how to behave in the ‘real’ world. The nomenclature even seems ridiculous; increasingly, he feels like the dream world is the only reality that matters. In the dream, there is Eames and Arthur and one of them trying to hold the other together as he drifts farther and farther away. The dream quickly become the most important thing in Arthur’s life, and everything he says and does topside is just a diversion, something that has to be survived so Arthur can get back to what matters. It’s like living in a play. Arthur says the right things at the right time, tells his superiors that he’s making progress, telling them what they want to hear so they keep hooking him up to the PASIV one more time. When Arthur’s not dreaming or making his reports, he waits in the small cube assigned to him, knees drawn to his chest atop the crisp sheets of his bed, leaning against the wall. Mostly he thinks. A little about his childhood; some more about his short time in the military. Of the possibilities he’d hoped to find in dreamsharing. Of the ways Eames showed him to make those possibilities reality.

It always comes back to Eames.

The first time Major Smith had sent Arthur down into Eames’ dream, Arthur had felt superiority. After all, this man was a criminal, while Arthur was a man of principle, working on the side of the angels. He’d felt worldly and wise. Even though he’d doubted the success of this particular mission, thinking his superiors were pushing too hard and too fast for the nascent capabilities of dreamsharing, Arthur had still generally felt as if his ‘side’ would prevail eventually.

And then.

Then Eames had seen through his disguise in seconds and laughed at him, all of them, their toys and projects and goals. Sat him down and told him the truth about dreamsharing. Arthur hadn’t wanted to believe him, but time after time, everything Eames had predicted had come to pass.

Eames had told Arthur the truth, opened his eyes, and shown him how to fly. Kissed him and petted him and taught him how to lust. And Arthur has returned that gift by falling hopelessly, heedlessly in love. Maybe it was unavoidable. Maybe he would have fallen in love with anyone he spent all of his time with, cut off from contact with the outside world. First learning to see and respect their incredible strength, and then watching helplessly as that person is nonetheless destroyed inch by inch in front of his eyes. 

It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Arthur’s so-called superiors are doing terrible things, and Arthur is fighting a desperate battle to keep Eames in one piece and losing. Eames still believes that his team will attempt a rescue, but Arthur is privately terrified that they will be too late.

He’s wondering exactly how deep underground they are, and how many guards and keycode-locked doors stand between them and freedom, when his door opens and Major Smith appears to take him back to the dream.

* * *

The thirtieth time Arthur goes into Eames’ mind is when it finally happens.

The rain is subdued, this time, the usual thunder and lightning entirely missing. The river of projections has stopped flowing, and groups of impeccably suited businessmen stand uncertainly under streetlamps, looking around, obviously confused. Arthur suppresses a shiver and walks towards the lobby. Eames’ mind is beginning to lose itself.

Inside the lobby the lights are still on. The fireplaces crackle, the projections are still present. But they just, too, are just standing there, confused, while Eames lies on his couch and does not move.

“Eames,” Arthur whispers, coming close.

His eyes flutter open, and Arthur knows something is wrong, knows it with a horrible free-falling sensation in his gut. The normally brilliant blue is clouded, and the pupils are blown too wide. They flicker and jump at the sound of Arthur’s voice, trying to and failing to focus.

And then he says, “Arthur?” and his voice is so weak, it breaks partway through, but the desperation comes through loud and clear.

Arthur doesn’t even have to think about it. This is what his superiors have been waiting for, the moment they’ve kept sending him down here in anticipation of, when Eames is too disoriented and drugged on pain to know which way is up. Eames is vulnerable now. His iron will has faltered in the face of everything to which he’s been subjected, and it is time, as he once put it, for Arthur to pounce.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he reaches for Eames again, lifting him up as gently as Arthur knows how, though Eames still winces and shivers all over and makes a broken sound that _hurts_ to hear. Arthur settles carefully down on the couch, propping his back against one of the high arms, and draws Eames back down to rest against him. “Shhh,” he says. “I’m here, Eames. I’m here.”

“Arthur,” Eames sighs longingly, one hand creeping blindly to settle on his leg. Arthur reaches down and captures that hand, folding it into his own, twining their fingers together. With his other hand, he gently strokes Eames’ hair. Arthur imagines he can feel the hairline fracture of the skull Eames has been sporting the last half-dozen sessions and more; he thinks he can sense the blood slowly dripping against him from between Eames’ legs.

“It’ll be okay,” Arthur lies, and presses his lips to Eames’ hair.

* * *

Eames goes in and out of reality. Usually, if he’s lucid when Arthur arrives, he stays that way, and he’s able to climb out of the abyss and back to himself. Their rambling conversations about anything and everything are a thing of the past. Instead Eames’ hands are desperate on Arthur’s body, his kisses hard and fierce, and wet heat burns against Arthur’s hand when he reaches up to brush moisture away from Eames’ eyes. _Arthur,_ Eames will whisper in his ear like a prayer. 

Afterwards, when Arthur is holding Eames helplessly and struggling not to cry himself, it will be his turn to whisper. _It’ll be okay. I’m here._

At least one of those is the truth.

If Eames is out of it, they don’t make it past the lobby. Arthur curls up around Eames on the couch and says the same things over and over again, petting, trying to soothe. Sometimes it works; other times Eames thrashes and cries out in the grip of nightmares Arthur can’t imagine. The restless movements do Eames no favors, aggravating the mental echoes of his injuries, but Arthur can’t bring himself to restrain Eames as the military does topside. He wraps his arms around Eames instead and begs him to stop. Sometimes Eames does. Other times Arthur is awakened from the dream exhausted from trying to keep Eames still, and he has to tell Major Smith that there was no progress from this session. Smith’s face darkens every time Arthur says that, and he’s afraid for himself now too, because he senses that he is _this close_ to being declared expendable. But he doesn’t know what to do about that, and most of the time he’s far too worried about Eames to have anything to spare for himself. He collapses into his bunk and stares at the ceiling and waits for the time to pass so he can return to Eames in the dream, and prays that _this time_ he’ll be lucid, because those are the times keeping Arthur sane. If Arthur loses it, they’re both done. 

Even when Eames _is_ lucid, it’s all he can do to struggle out of the haze of pain and injury to talk to Arthur long enough to impose order on his body. The effort leaves him panting and exhausted now. Being tired in the dream seems to be a function of mental energy, not physical energy, and the mental energy Eames is expending to function anything like normally is immense. Arthur wants to tell him to stop and save his strength, but the problem is that there’s really no truly restful state for Eames to be in. If he’s not exhausting himself to suppress his injuries, he’s just lying there in the dream in constant pain, and that’s hardly a better state of affairs. So Eames struggles through it every time, grimly, holding onto Arthur like a lifeline while Arthur talks a low, constant stream of nonsense to distract Eames and tries to ignore his growing feeling of helplessness. Then they hold together for whatever time they have left in the dream, curled up around each other. Eames is too worn to do anything more than kiss Arthur, though from time to time Arthur does something nice for Eames with his hands or mouth. Arthur tells himself he’s doing it to trigger an endorphin rush, not because he’s fucking pathetic and desperate to reassure himself that things can still be whatever passes for normal with them.

The thirty-seventh session is when Eames’ team finally comes for him.

Arthur is down in the dream, leaning against the head of the elaborate four-poster bed Eames had originally conjured for them, holding the other man carefully and trying to convince himself not to give up. Eames has been fading in and out; when Arthur first appeared down here, Eames knew who he was, but didn’t resist when Arthur curled in around him anyway. Eames started to tell him about the latest round of torture, haltingly, but didn’t get past the electrical shocks before his conversation started wandering and Arthur shushed him with fingers on his lips. Eames sleeps for a while then, in the dream, or maybe he just passes out, Arthur’s not sure. _Can_ he sleep in the dream? _Can_ he pass out? Eames hasn’t said it, saving his voice for the more overt tortures they’ve used, but Arthur suspects they’ve been keeping Eames from sleeping normally, messing with his circadian rhythms as a way of softening him up. It’s a fairly standard technique, and not generally judged to be too far over the line into _cruel and unusual_ , but that’s without the broken bones and the electricity and the sexual abuse. When Eames wakes up again, Arthur can tell at a glance that he’s out of it, so he talks to Eames in a soft voice and promises again that everything will be okay.

Then the music starts.

It catches Arthur by surprise, because it’s way too early for the music to start playing. They always send him down for the same amount of time, and he’d thought that the PASIV only had a fixed duration, because why else would they send Arthur down for the same length of time every session, far longer than is really necessary or desirable from the military’s point of view? But Eames had told him it was possible to vary the time spent under, one of the many things about dreamsharing he’d taught Arthur before they’d fucked Eames up too much to expend energy on such a trivial pursuit. Arthur hasn’t told anyone about that, though, so Smith always goes through the same routine, filling the needle with the same amount of sedative and pressing the same sequence of buttons on the PASIV’s control dash, like a priest faithfully carrying out an age-old ritual. Which means the music shouldn’t be playing yet. They should still have several hours left in the dream.

Then Arthur realizes it’s the wrong music. The army has been using an instrumental piece, something full of horns and drums. Fitting, Arthur supposes, though the last dozen times or so the choice of music has seemed increasingly grotesque. But this is something long and lyrical, a woman singing, something in French.

Eames opens his eyes as the music gets louder. He says “Dom?” and Arthur’s heart sinks, thinking Eames is still out of it. But Eames isn’t looking at him when he says it, and his eyes are clear and brilliant. He’s looking up, at the ceiling.

Arthur looks up too. “Dom?” he tries.

He falls.


	4. Reforging

“…up,” a voice is saying insistently. A harsh voice, strident, but unfamiliar. “Wake up.”

Arthur looks up, a long way up, and realizes that he is on the floor. He’s still in the chair, but the chair is on the floor too; why is that?

“Because I kicked you out of the dream,” the familiar voice says impatiently. “Wake up. I need you to focus.”

The world snaps back in as if those were the magic words. Arthur’s lying on his back on the floor, still half in the chair; it’s clear that the chair was tipped over with him still in it. Instinctively he looks at his forearm, expecting to see the needle still in place, but it’s gone. A woman with russet hair is winding it up and stowing it back into the PASIV, her movements quick and assured, bespeaking familiarity with the device. The other needle is still extended, attached to Eames’ arm; he’s still out cold. The armed guards are on the floor, not moving. Their weapons are stacked seperarely in a corner. Major Smith isn’t immediately visible. And standing above Arthur is a man Arthur’s never seen before, pointing a gun at his head.

“Dom,” he croaks, taking a wild guess.

The man blinks and does a double take. “How do you know my name?”

Arthur locks eyes with the other man. “Eames told me.”

The woman comes around the bed, commanding Arthur’s gaze, even over the theoretically more pressing matter of the gun pointed at his forehead. “When did he tell you that?” 

Her voice is warm, cultured, with a French accent. Arthur thinks of the music that had been playing in the dream right before he woke up. She’s looking at him warily, but she doesn’t look like she’s about to shoot him. So he tells her the truth. “Just now. When he heard the music.”

“And what else did he tell you?” the man with the gun demands, angry. “While you were torturing him, I mean.”

“I never,” Arthur snaps, furious at the accusation. “I’m the one who’s been keeping him together down there!”

“Sure,” Dom says, sarcasm dripping from every word. “While you waited for your chance to stick in the knife.”

Arthur hesitates for a moment, and Dom’s eyes flash and the muscles in his forearm bunch with the urge to pull the trigger. “I was supposed to,” Arthur admits. “But…” his gaze shifts, past Dom and the woman both, to linger on Eames lying there on the bed. “I didn’t.”

“Dom,” the woman says. “Let’s wake Eames up and ask.”

“You believe him?” Dom asks.

Her eyes are considering, weighing. Arthur tries to breathe normally, but it’s hard.

“I think we can shoot him afterwards, if we need to,” she says at last.

Dom glares for a moment longer, then sighs. “Fine.”

The woman walks over to the bed.

“Is it safe to wake him up?” Dom demands.

Arthur wrenches his gaze away from Eames and back to Dom. “I don’t know,” he says truthfully. “I’m not very experienced with this yet… he’s, um, drifting. In and out. Sometimes he knows what’s going on, sometimes he doesn’t.” Arthur ducks his head, expecting Dom to be upset, but the other man just nods as if he expected to hear that. Which is scary all by itself, and so Arthur is surprised when Dom sticks the gun in his belt, stares at the hand Dom extends Arthur for a beat before he reaches out and lets Dom haul him to his feet.

“When I woke you up just now, was he in or out?” Dom asks. 

“In,” he answers. “I think. He had just woken up. Can you sleep within the dream?”

“You can,” the woman answers for Dom, “but it’s not a good sign.” She’s moved to the side of the bed and is checking Eames over. Her hands, so sure on the PASIV, are hesitant now. She’s not a doctor, but she acts as if she knows what she’s supposed to be doing, which is more than Arthur can say right now. “I’m not sure he’ll be able to move much under his own power, even if he’s aware when we wake him up,” she warns.

Dom’s frown deepends, but he shakes his head sharply once and his voice is decisive. “We’ll deal with it. Wake him up.”

The woman reaches over and presses a sequence of buttons on the PASIV.

Eames comes awake with a gasp of pain, which he follows with a low groan that seems to come all the way from his toes. His eyes, which had opened wide, flutter shut again almost at once, and his breathing speeds up from the even cadence of sleep. “Arthur?” he whispers. It’s the first time Arthur has heard Eames speak topside. His voice is even more destroyed than it was in the dream.

Arthur clears his throat. “Hey.”

The woman is sliding the cannula out of Eames’ arms. Eames starts at the unexpected touch and opens his eyes again. “Mal?”

The woman looks over her shoulder from where she is coiling the second line down and nods. “Yes, _cherie_ , it’s me. Dom and I both came.” She snaps a lid on the PASIV and the whole thing folds up, looking for all the world like an ordinary briefcase – metal, and silver and shiny, but nothing to attract too much attention beyond being a little avant-garde. 

The names ring a bell, now that Arthur is thinking again. Dom and Mal are members of Eames’ – whatever; _gang_ is probably a slur, but he admitted freely to being a thief and a con man, so _crime ring_ is probably not too far from the truth. They are two of the people that Major Smith said the army was hoping to roll up. 

“Eames,” Dom is saying. “This young man was down in the dream with you.” He gestures to Arthur.

“He’s okay,” Eames rasps. Flashes them both a quick smile. “Owe him rather a lot, actually. My sanity, for one thing.”

“Hm.” Dom flicks Arthur a sideways gaze.

“Then he’d better come with us,” Mal says firmly, helping Eames sit up. She looks over at Arthur. “They’ll kill you if you stay behind.”

Arthur stares at her. “Right.” He looks around for his jacket; it’s still on the chair where he slung it, and he steps over Major Smith’s unconscious body to get it. There’s something that looks suspiciously like a stun-gun burn on Smith’s shoulder, and Arthur is starting to put his jacket on as he always does, when he stops suddenly and looks, really looks, at the fabric in his arms. It’s standard US Army issue, olive green and stiff beneath his fingers. He looks at it for a moment, then lets it drop to the floor.

Dom and Mal are helping Eames off the bed, one of them under each arm; he hisses when his feet touch the floor, but keeps standing, and Mal looks visibly relieved. “Here,” Arthur says, hurrying over. “Let me. I’m no good with crime or sneaking or breaking out of secure facilities or whatever it is you’ve got to do next. You… do your thing.” Best not to mention that he also feels overwhelmingly possessive right now, and after what Eames has been going through for the past month Arthur isn’t really comfortable with anyone’s hands on Eames but his.

Dom regards him steadily for a moment. Arthur can see the gears turning in his head, wondering how far Arthur can be trusted, and how much he can’t afford to turn down this offer right now. “Fine,” he says abruptly.

They change places carefully; Mal takes most of Eames’ weight as they do, and Eames gasps his thanks at Arthur as he adjusts Eames’ arm over his shoulder for better support. Dom waits to see that they’re balanced, the three of them against each other, before he steps. “Let’s go, then,” he says, striding towards the door.

Arthur isn’t sure exactly how Dom and Mal got in, and even less sure how they’re going to get back out again, but it seems as if their plan is to simply walk, and that works remarkably well for the first thousand yards or so. There have never been many people around the whole time Arthur has been down here. Arthur, Eames, Major Smith. Sometimes the General. A few guards, a few staff who manage food and supplies. Torturers and jailers he hasn’t seen but whose existence has been implied by Eames’ steadily deteriorating physical condition. Although the facility is buried deep underground and not constructed on a particularly generous scale, it’s always felt echoing to him, clearly meant to house a larger operation than the tiny splinter of Project Dream that’s been his life for the last month. The quartet doesn’t move quickly, but they make steady progress, Eames at least holding his own as they proceed through the first set of doors and up a staircase to the next level.

They encounter brief resistance at the next set of doors, but Dom has the service worker down on the floor with a gun pressed into his back before Arthur can blink, and the man goes limp and lets Dom truss him with cable ties and drag him into a nearby closet without raising a ruckus. They proceed, Arthur’s shoulders aching where Eames’ arm is around them, his shirt damp with sweat and sticking to his shoulder blades as they move.

The second stairwell is when things go completely to pot. They’re halfway up it, absolutely sitting ducks, when the door at the top swings open and three men, guards by their uniforms, walk onto the landing and freeze.

Dom doesn’t suffer from any such momentary lapse; he lunges forward, taking the steps three at a time and tackles the one in the lead before he can even get his sidearm out of its holster. Mal drops Eames’ arm and races up in Dom’s wake. Arthur grunts as Eames’ full weight lands on him. He swings around, trying to turn the collapse into a controlled fall that gets both of them onto the floor in the partial shelter of the stairwell. Feet are pounding above them, men – and one woman – are shouting. And then suddenly one set of feet are cascading down behind him and Arthur spins around.

One of the guards has gotten past Dom and Mal and is running for the lower door. His gun is in his hand, and Arthur watches in slow motion as he spins around and sees Arthur standing there.

If the guard were thinking, he would have run right past Arthur and Eames and gone through the door. He’s past the only two real combatants in the stairwell; Eames is in no shape to stop him, and Arthur barely counts. The guard could run right past them and rouse the entire base, such as it is, against them.

But he screeches to a halt and raises his firearm instead.

Four things happen in rapid succession. Arthur stares, frozen, trying to think of what to do and unable to come up with anything. The guard fires his gun. A warm body – Eames – impacts Arthur abruptly, throwing him to the side and crashing them both to the floor as Eames hisses in pain. And Dom leaps over the stairwell railing from the landing above. He’s on the guard in a blur of arms and legs and rage, and when it’s over, the guard is lying on the ground, not moving, and there’s a red stain seeping out from somewhere high on the left side of his chest.

There’s a sudden silence. Dom stands over the body of the guard, staring, his hands twitching. One of them is still holding a gun.

Then Mal comes pounding down the stairs after Dom, looks right past him, and says _“Eames!”_

Arthur scrambles on the floor, trying to get up; Eames has fallen across him at an awkward angle, and he’s not moving. Arthur finally manages to push himself into a seated position and reaches for Eames. His eyes are closed, his breathing is shallow, and when Mal kneels next to them and tries to move him, a terribly familiar red pool starts spreading across Arthur’s legs.

“ _Mon Dieu_ ,” Mal says. “Eames.” She’s pressing both hands against his side; he’s not moving, and even in the harsh light of the stairwell, he’s terribly pale.

Dom turns around. “Get up,” he commands. He’s white to the lips and his eyes are burning. Arthur has to look away from the expression on his face. Mal looks afraid, which is funny because Arthur thought that Mal was supposed to be this hardened master criminal. Meanwhile Arthur is just a kid who’s never seen a person shot in his life that wasn’t on TV, but oddly enough, his hands are completely steady as he hoists an unconscious Eames into a crude approximation of a fireman’s carry and nods at Dom. 

“Let’s go,” he says.

The rest of the escape from the compound is something Arthur can only remember later in pieces, a nightmare sequence of hallways and doors and faceless men with guns barring his path. He remembers the feel of a body pressed against his as they crouch against a corner, waiting for Dom, on point, to give the all-clear. Sometimes it’s Eames, unconscious and propped up against him while they wait to see what’s coming next. Sometimes it’s Mal, covering his back while he punches half-remembered codes into keypads with trembling fingers, praying that he recalls the numbers right, that they haven’t changed the codes, that the door will still open with the facility in lockdown. Once it’s Dom, his arm across Arthur’s chest catching him mid-run while the pistol in Dom’s hand speaks volumes. But mostly Arthur remembers the feeling of blood, its smell and taste, as it paves his path to freedom.

The sun is unimaginably harsh, the light of day seeming to destroy the nightmare of the compound all at once. Arthur remembers climbing into a nondescript van on legs that shake with fatigue, and turning to help pull Mal in, to lever Eames up between them and drape him across one of the rows of seats, pressing a discarded jacket ( _military, must have come from one of the guards inside_ ) against the bullet wound in his side and watching as the olive green darkens slowly to rust.

He doesn’t remember driving away.

* * *

He comes back to herself leaning against the wall of a flophouse in Mombasa. Arthur wants to pace, but Dom is already doing that and the room isn’t big enough for two to traverse, and Dom needs it more. Instead Arthur focuses on his breathing as a way to keep control. In and out, out and in, varying the depth of his inhales and the length of his exhales to fill his mind up completely.

The sound of the door opening is like a gunshot in the quiet room. Dom whirls around, one hand going to his side, and does not relax when he sees it is only the doctor he had engaged on their arrival. The unassuming man had disappeared into the other room with Eames moments after their arrival, and they had all been waiting on tenterhooks ever since.

“How is he?” Arthur asks, when it becomes apparent that Dom is not going to.

The doctor’s eyes flicker to him. “Not good. He’s still unconscious. That bullet he took in your escape looks like it was one thing too many on top of everything else. His system’s overstressed. I’ve got him patched up as well as I can, but he hasn’t woken up yet, and that worries me.”

Dom does not react. It’s left to Arthur to shiver and look away, thinking that _patched up_ is such a deceptively little way of describing what the doctor must have had to do for Eames. The broken bones, the contusions, the hairline skull fracture, the anal tearing… Arthur shakes his head, stops that litany of injuries right in its tracks. He’s had to recite it once already, when he and Dom and Mal first linked up with the doctor and turned Eames over to his care. Mal had run out of the room partway through and been found later vomiting in the toilet. Dom had turned to stone; later, Arthur had found him calmly and methodically destroying a punching bag with fists gone bloody from rage. The doctor alone had been able to hear the litany of injuries without more than a jaded sigh, and that made Arthur shy away from the thought of what else he had seen in his life. But Eames’ doctor knows everything there is to know, now, and there will never be any reason to remember that list again. He can delete it now.

Arthur looks back up. Dom is staring straight at the wall, gaze flat and hard and blank, a terrifying combination. The doctor glances at Arthur, a silent question in his eyes. He nods, since it seems to be the thing to do.

“Right,” the doctor says. “I’ll keep you posted.” He makes a hasty exist; Arthur doesn’t blame him.

Arthur pushes off from where he’s been leaning against the wall and walks over to Dom. “Hey.” Dom looks up suddenly, focusing on him intensely. “He’s going to be okay.” Arthur keeps repeating that to himself, and it saying it out loud feels significant, like the extra weight of his voice has power.

Dom doesn’t respond for a long moment, and when he does, his voice is carefully flat. “You don’t know that.”

Arthur frowns, trying to figure out what to say, before giving up and settling for the truth. “You’re right, I don’t know that for sure, but he will anyway. I was _there_ – ” Dom’s gaze hardens, and he thinks belatedly that maybe reminding him of Arthur’s part in this isn’t the wisest thing to do, but he can’t back off now, and Dom has to hear this. Arthur has to _say_ this, because words and will have power, Eames taught him that. “I was there, and I saw exactly how strong he is, which is really fucking strong, okay? He’s going to beat this. You’ll see.”

Dom stares at Arthur a moment longer. Then he turns and walks away.

* * *

There’s nothing to do then but wait for Eames to wake up. Well, that and pray the military doesn’t find them. Mal deals with it by drawing, filling notebooks on end with sketches, blueprints, even doodles. Arthur can’t tell how much of it Mal even thinks is worth a damn, but she’s drawing to fill time more than pages, until the ink runs dry in her pens and she curls up on herself and sobs.

Dom sits and waits. It’s scary to watch him, how still he is, how he’s capable of ignoring everything around him. Arthur avoids him, and even Mal, who is apparently his wife, doesn’t attempt to draw him out.

Arthur is usually found one on one with the punching bag, beating himself bloody until his rage has all bled itself out, until even his anguish can’t overcome the pain he’s inflicting on himself. Then he collapses, sweaty and exhausted, for a few hours. He can’t sleep longer; he thinks spending so much time in the dream over the last month has done something to him. He can’t bring himself to care, just pace and punch and wait for Eames to open his eyes and say _Arthur_. That’s all he needs, one word from Eames.

It has become blindingly clear to Arthur that he loves this man more than he loves his future and his freedom and possibly his life, and that if Eames does not come out on the other side of this, Arthur will go absolutely insane.

The doctor stays with Eames, and they don’t see either of them.

* * *

Eames wakes up on the third day and, according to the doctor, immediately calls for Arthur. Dom looks put out by this, and Arthur sympathizes in a vague sort of way; after all, the Cobbs are the ones who risked their lives to pull Eames out of a secure facility, while Arthur was by all accounts a member of the team responsible for Eames’ current condition, even if Arthur later had a change of heart. But Mal seems to understand. She puts a restraining hand on Dom’s arm and nods Arthur towards the door with a resigned smile. And Arthur never even thinks of insisting one of the others go first, not when Eames is asking for him, so he goes.

The setup is nothing like the industrial sterility of the compound or the posh luxury of Eames’ dream, but it’s terribly familiar for all that. Eames is lying, still on his side, gunshot wound elevated, propped against a few pillows and watching Arthur’s approach with those brilliant blue eyes. 

Arthur thinks, _this isn’t a dream_. Eames’ injuries are physical and real and present, and maybe he should stop short of the bed and resist the urge to touch Eames in case he does something wrong and hurts Eames further. But Eames is waiting expectantly for Arthur to come closer and he can’t make himself stop, taking the last few steps to Eames’ bedside, sinking to his knees and reaching out to twine their hands together and rest his head, gently, against Eames’ hip. Eames’ other hand comes down and tangles itself in Arthur’s hair, which is desperately in need of a wash, and Arthur closes his eyes and listens to Eames breathe.

“Arthur,” Eames says on a sigh. His voice is still broken and exhausted, but something else shines bright through it, ringing like a bell in the enclosed space of the little room. “Love.”

“It’ll be okay?” Arthur says, and for the first time since they’ve met, he allows it to come out as a question.

“Yes,” Eames tells him.

And since Eames has never, in the entire time they’ve known each other, told Arthur anything other than the complete and unvarnished truth, Arthur finally allows himself to relax.

* * *

When Eames is able to travel again, they move to Tangiers, and though Arthur can’t completely stop himself from hovering Eames makes the entire trip moving under his own power. He’s still stiff and awkward and Arthur is afraid he’ll fall apart under his hands, but the doctor, whose name is Yusuf, is watching and nodding and saying things like “full recovery” and “no lasting damage”. Mal cries with joy and even Dom cracks a smile, though only very briefly.

They have dinner together, a simple meal cooked over a campstove – there’s no electricity – and after the sun has set and the stars are twinkling in the sky they all sit out on the balcony in the open air. Eames has a mug of tea, since he’s still on a restricted diet, but the rest of them are holding various alcoholic beverages, and Arthur tips his head back and looks at the sky and realizes that this is the most at peace he’s felt since the day the notice arrived telling him he’d been selected for Project Dream.

Eames is the first to break the silence, clearing his throat carefully as a prelude to speech. He’s looking at Arthur, and the look in his eyes is one Arthur doesn’t know how to interpret. Eames asks, “Have you thought about what you’re going to do now?”

Arthur blinks, not sure how to answer. “Do?”

“For a living,” Eames says gently. “I’m grateful – more than grateful – ” Eames grins a little, and Arthur makes a fierce noise – “for your help in getting me out of that hellhole. But I’m afraid it leaves you rather out of a job, and the military will have made sure that no one legitimate will touch you.”

“I – no.” Arthur sets his beer down, feeling a little light-headed and more than a little foolish. “No, I hadn’t thought about it.” There had been too much going on. The nightmare of isolation in the Project Dream labs, trying to hold Eames together, the rapid pace of their eventual rescue, the weeks spent hiding with no other thought than surviving another five minutes. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Mmm.” Eames’ voice is suspiciously level; Arthur peers at him, atuomatically trying to figure out what injury Eames is hiding, until he realizes that that sound in Eames’ voice is nothing more sinister than amusement. “I thought that might be the case. And that being so, we’d like to make you an offer, if we might.”

“An offer?” _We?_ Arthur looks around, to see Dom and Mal on the balcony looking back at him. Dom looks watchful, Mal hopeful, and Eames amused. 

“It happens that our team is currently short a man,” Eames continues. “A point man, to be precise.”

“Oh…” Arthur tries to figure out if that’s a euphemism, if he should be reminding them of how useful he wasn’t, exactly, during the escape from the Project Dream compound. He settles for saying, “What makes you think I’m even capable of that? I barely know dreamsharing, and I’ve never worked on…” he gestures. “Your side of the law.” 

“I think you’d be good at it,” Eames says seriously. “I’ve gotten to see you at work in the dream, you know.” He smiles conspiratorily. “You’ve got an amazing talent for holding a bad situation together, and a cool head under pressure. That’s the basic skill set. The rest would come.”

Arthur opens his mouth, then closes it again. He’s not sure what to say. If anyone had told him that his life would come to this, sitting on a roof in Tangier with a gang of theives being offered an opportunity at a life of crime, well, he would have laughed in their face. Things like that just don’t happen to people like him. 

_Then who do they happen to?_

He looks back at Eames, sitting and waiting with obvious hope on his face. “Please?” he says, watching Arthur’s face. “I find I want to keep you near me, if you don’t mind the thought.” The hope is visible on his face now, and he looks touchingly open. Arthur has seen Eames vulnerable and in pain, beaten and raped and shot, but he’s never seen him anything remotely like this before. He knows it’s not something Eames shows often, and he feels something in his chest tighten in response to the level of trust Eames has just shown him. 

For a moment, Eames seems to be about to say something sappy, something like _I owe you everything_ or _You are precious to me_ or even _I love you_. But that’s not Eames, and the moment passes. Instead he grins at Arthur, that strangely endearing grin, and says “Let’s take the world by storm, darling.”

Arthur finds himself grinning back at Eames, fierce and proud, because the whole world is spread out in front of them, all of them, and there’s nothing they can’t do. He throws one arm around Eames’ shoulders, who grunts a little at the contact but reaches up to hold Arthur in place anyway, grinning like a maniac. With his other hand, Arthur lifts up his beer.

“You bet,” Arthur says. “Count me in.”


End file.
